Boston Chefs Meet Technology Designers to Explore Common Ground on How to Satisfy Customers

BOSTON, MA - (March 17, 2009) -- Boston Executive Chefs from Rialto Restaurant and Gargoyles on the Square will meet with technology experts to compare and contrast concepts from food design and user experience aimed at meeting customer needs at ACM's Computer Human Interaction (CHI) conference on April 6th at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

The panel discussion, “What Can User Experience Learn from Food Design?” is the brainchild of a trained chef, Patañjali S. Venkatacharya, Chief Evangelist & Architect in the Applications User Experience at Oracle USA, Inc. Participants include: Jody Adams, Executive Chef at Rialto Restaurant; Jason Santos, Executive Chef at Gargoyles on the Square; Daniel Schwartz, Senior Interaction Designer at Oracle USA, Inc.; and Dr. Ronald Baecker, Chair in Human-Computer Interaction, and founder, Director, and Chief Scientist of the Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of Toronto.

“The main objective of the panel is to explore pertinent questions on the craft of design from two different domain perspectives, whilst evaluating some of the key overlapping concepts,” notes Venkatcharya.
Among the issues they will examine are:

How to ensure that designs satisfy the end customers
The top 3 challenges in coming up with a new design (or recipe)
How to conduct user testing in a high-stress environment
Processes to use in developing entirely new creations

The annual conference on Computer-Human Interaction (www.chi2009.org) is the premier worldwide forum for exchanging information on all aspects of how people interact with computers. CHI 2009 runs from April 4-9, at the Hynes Convention Center. It offers two days of pre-conference workshops and four days of dynamic sessions that explore the future of computer-human interaction with researchers, practitioners, educators and students.

More than 2000 professionals from over 40 countries are expected at this year’s conference, which marks 27 years of research, innovation and development of the Computer-Human Interaction community. CHI 2009 is sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (SIGCHI). Organizations contributing to the financial support of the conference include Autodesk, Inc.; Google, Inc.; Microsoft Corp.; and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

About ACM

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery (www.acm.org), is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.